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Evaluation of TRMM multi-satellite precipitation analysis (TMPA) against terrestrial measurement over a humid sub-tropical basin, India

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Abstract

To support the GPM mission which is homologous to its predecessor, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), this study has been undertaken to evaluate the accuracy of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission multi-satellite precipitation analysis (TMPA) daily-accumulated precipitation products for 5 years (2008–2012) using the statistical methods and contingency table method. The analysis was performed on daily, monthly, seasonal and yearly basis. The TMPA precipitation estimates were also evaluated for each grid point i.e. 0.25° × 0.25° and for 18 rain gauge stations of the Betwa River basin, India. Results indicated that TMPA precipitation overestimates the daily and monthly precipitation in general, particularly for the middle sub-basin in the non-monsoon season. Furthermore, precision of TMPA precipitation estimates declines with the decrease of altitude at both grid and sub-basin scale. The study also revealed that TMPA precipitation estimates provide better accuracy in the upstream of the basin compared to downstream basin. Nevertheless, the detection capability of daily TMPA precipitation improves with increase in altitude for drizzle rain events. However, the detection capability decreases during non-monsoon and monsoon seasons when capturing moderate and heavy rain events, respectively. The veracity of TMPA precipitation estimates was improved during the rainy season than during the dry season at all scenarios investigated. The analyses suggest that there is a need for better precipitation estimation algorithm and extensive accuracy verification against terrestrial precipitation measurement to capture the different types of rain events more reliably over the sub-humid tropical regions of India.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the support from MHRD and Water Resources Development and Management Department, IIT-Roorkee. We are indebted to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Pune, and data providers of TMPA (disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov) for providing daily precipitation data. The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewer and editor for the invaluable guidance and constructive comments, which improved the presentation of the paper considerably.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Water Resources Development and Management, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India

    Dheeraj Kumar, Amar Kant Gautam, Santosh S Palmate, Ashish Pandey, Neha Rathore & Nayan Sharma

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, SHIATS-, Allahabad, India

    Shakti Suryavanshi

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  1. Dheeraj Kumar
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  2. Amar Kant Gautam
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  3. Santosh S Palmate
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  7. Nayan Sharma
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Correspondence to Dheeraj Kumar.

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Kumar, D., Gautam, A.K., Palmate, S.S. et al. Evaluation of TRMM multi-satellite precipitation analysis (TMPA) against terrestrial measurement over a humid sub-tropical basin, India. Theor Appl Climatol 129, 783–799 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1807-9

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